Artist Rob Hann is physically in New York much of the time. But I know deep down he's always on the road. I'm thrilled to present a summery selection of rich and gorgeous photographs from a trip earlier this year.

"While trying to decide where to go on my latest road trip I found myself singing Little Feat's 1971 song, Willin', one of my absolute favourites. There's a line in the song that goes "I've been from Tucson, to Tucumcari, Tehachapi to Tonopah" so that's what I did. I flew into Tucson, Arizona, got a rental car and headed off. In 2 weeks I drove 5,700 miles and took in 7 States. Curiously, I never took any pictures in Tucson or Tucumcari, Tehachapi or Tonopah."

View the magazine full screen photo feature.

View Rob's 2010 feature 'Deserted States of America'.

Amboy Rd, California © Rob Hann

As much as Jim Henson and the Muppets were a major part of childhood, it's Peanuts for which I feel the most love. Snoopy and Woodstock featured heavily in my childhood and I often think about Snoopy's happy dance when I'm feeling like celebrating.

A portrait of Charles Schultz was donated by Mrs Karsh to the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery last year and is the Gallery's first image of the cartoonist.

Charles Schultz, 1988 © Yousuf Karsh

New York's Museum of the Moving Image is the current venue for 'Jim Henson's Fantastic World', a traveling exhibition by the Smithsonian Institution. "The exhibition spans Henson's entire career, with drawings, cartoons, and posters produced during his college years in the late 1950s and objects related to the inspired imaginary world of his popular 1982 fantasy film, The Dark Crystal. The exhibition features artifacts from Henson's best-known projects, The Muppet Show, The Muppet Movie and its sequels, Fraggle Rock, and Sesame Street, in addition to materials from Sam and Friends, an early show he created in the 1950s, and his pioneering television commercial work in the 1960s."
Miss Piggy, Kermit and Bert and Ernie are all there as well! Let's go!

Jim Henson © Yousuf Karsh

I'm pretty excited to update this post with the OK Go cover of the Muppet Theme Show.

"I'm in Costa Rica working with the ants. And they're stars."
 
Catherine Chalmers' wonderful photographs of praying mantises have graced these pages. Keeping in touch, I was excited when I heard she'd be in Costa Rica working with leafcutter ants this year, and hence a series for the height of summer featuring my personal favourite bugs.

"Leafcutter ants are the principal herbivore in the tropical and semi-tropical regions where they live. They do not clear cut rainforests quite like we do, but they can strip a tree in a single night, and repeat this night after night. At a time in history when humans are causing deforestation at an alarming rate, this insect provides rich and relevant opportunities for illuminating man's impact on the environment.
 
Throughout history, dominance begets hubris, the language of which humans have used to heighten divisions and impress superiority across tribes, cultures and nations. The leafcutter ant project borrows that language and uses it as a metaphor for the relationship between humans and the natural world today."

It's easy to become enthralled with Catherine as she masterfully reflects humans' fascination  and relationships with creepy crawlies back on us and relates their behaviour to ours. It's hard to do this new ongoing project justice here, so I must encourage you to follow the links and learn more.



Ant Works preview: "Usually leafcutter ants cut green leaves high up in the forest canopy. In order to film the 'Ant Works' video, the heart of which is a stop-motion sequence of the colony completely denuding a tree, I need to find a plant the ants were willing to take that was also on my scale. I offered them more than a dozen plants they are known to like and they refused them all, except this one. The aesthetics of the video were framed by their choice of a plant that happened to resemble a Jackson Pollock painting. The final scene is an art show of the ants parading their works."

Excellent interview with Catherine about the Leafcutters project at Scientific American.

I highly recommend these radio interviews from Catherine's archives.

View the magazine full screen photo feature.

Anna Moller is a New York-based photographer whose images are here to cheer me up after a long week, reminding me how difficult muted simplicity is to achieve. Happy Friday! 

There's always one or other of us Karsh folks with our hands in a box looking for something fabulous. Our supreme scanmaster is in his secret location somewhere in the wilds of Canada pulling colour images and digitizing them for our ever-expanding non-analog archives.













Andy Warhol, 1979 © Yousuf Karsh

Dylan Coulter's ongoing project 'In The Nineties' was inspired by a photograph he made of his grandfather, age 91. His project is evolving into "an exploration of aging which I find fascinating, particularly since people are living longer in increasingly vital ways."












Nathelle Greenleaf, 95

Little Richard at KPIX-TV, San Francisco, 1967 © Baron Wolman

I've worked with Baron "Mixing business with pleasure since 1965" Wolman for almost 20 years now. Baron's iconic photographs graced the earliest years of Rolling Stone magazine, when he was their first shooter. His new autobiographical book, 'Baron Wolman: The Rolling Stone Years' is packed with icons of the 60s and 70s, the stories behind the photographs, and is an honest account of starting out green - "I didn't know what backstage was."

"I hope people spend some time reading the text. We look at pictures and wonder how they came to be. Or we speculate a bit about the life of a photographer, especially one who has been on the front lines, the front lines of any subject, be it music, war, politics, etc. In my book I tried to provide a small window into that photographer's life and offer a few words about the origin of the photos."

"...The other message I got from my days at Rolling Stone, one that I carry with me to this day, is the joy of having an idea and bringing it to reality. It was so wonderful; Jann presented this idea in April of 1967 and not even six months later the idea had turned into a reality as we watched our new baby come off the presses. An idea, Jann's and Ralph (Gleason)'s idea, had now become a reality."

Read lots more in the Rolling Stone Years blog. Buy a premium, signed edition. Buy a regular copy. Buy a T shirt, take a photo wearing it and Baron will put it in the blog.

View the full screen magazine photo feature.